Micah Kretchmer

Laboratory courses are essential in undergraduate physics education. The American Association of Physics Teachers recommends labs focus on developing students' experimental and professional skills, scientific reasoning, confidence, as well as other goals. Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) offer a promising approach to achieve these goals-providing authentic research opportunities to entire student cohorts while lowering barriers to research participation. However, few physics CUREs are documented in the literature. Broadly, our work aims to determine effective practices for developing and implementing physics CUREs. When developing a CURE, instructors should consider how to align course learning goals, such as engaging students in authentic research, with both the structural elements of a CURE and students' perceptions of those goals. Here, we examine how students engage with one aspect of authentic research, the idea of successful science, through an end-of-semester reflection assignment. We present the results of our analysis and compare how students in a CURE and those in a traditional lab course define successful science.

Undergraduate research has been shown to have many benefits for students, including degree persistence, feelings of belonging, and transferable research skills. However, there are barriers that prevent students' access to research experiences. Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) are a potential avenue to lower such barriers. Within STEM fields, physics has been identified as lacking CUREs, prompting our initiative to develop a physics framework to provide instructors with effective practices to develop their own CUREs. Understanding of students' perceptions of the connection between coursework and components of authentic research will inform the framework and assess impacts of course transformations. We probed student beliefs through writing assignments in a traditional lab course, exploring how authentic research elements were viewed in the context of the course.